The Returned: 'we never wanted it it to be the French Lost'

As the cult supernatural thriller returns to TV screens, director Fabrice
Gobert explains how season two will give viewers some of the answers they
crave

The Returned, season two

By Ed Power

4:43PM BST 16 Oct 2015

On a misty back road in the foothills of the French Alps, a low-hanging dread fills the air. The fog sweeping down from the glistening peaks adds an icy chill and, in the noonday gloom, there is the constant sense of being watched.

The atmosphere will be familiar to fans of The Returned, the cult supernatural thriller in which a remote mountain town is visited, and ultimately overrun, by the newly risen dead.

A surprise hit when it aired in the summer of 2013, the French series received near-universal praise from viewers and critics, who applauded its cinematic grandeur, outstanding acting and unnerving storyline. Stephen King, the horror writer, called it “scary and sexy” and, in November of that year, it scooped the International Emmy for best drama series.

Now the cast is back together, high above the quaint tourist city of Annecy, attempting to conjure up the same magic for a second series.

Céline Sallette (Julie) and Swann Nambotin (Victor) in season two of The Returned

As the cameras roll, actor Frédéric Pierrot, sporting a freshly cultivated wild-man beard, shambles from the tree line, exchanging harsh whispers with a companion. The plot is under wraps, so it is hard to work out exactly what’s happening. But whatever is going on, it’s sure to be surprising.

On American or British television, the return of the living dead would inevitably result in an apocalyptic bloodbath. That, after all, is the formula that has made The Walking Dead the great television sensation of the age. But The Returned is too sophisticated – too French – for zombie movie clichés. Schoolgirl Camille (Yara Pilartz), serial killer Serge (Guillaume Gouix), creepy little boy Victor (Swann Nambotin), haunted lover Simon (Pierre Perrier) and half a dozen others come back from the grave looking exactly as they did when alive, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are even dead.

“What interests me is the idea of normal people dealing with the fantastic,” says director and screenwriter Fabrice Gobert over coffee.

The show’s most powerful insight, he believes, is that even extraordinary events can, with time, feel mundane. When, in the first episode, 15-year-old Camille turns up on her parents’ doorstep four years after plunging to her apparent death in a bus crash, they are equally terrified and incredulous. But these white-hot emotions quickly cool, the family facing the far more awkward challenge of reconnecting with a daughter to whom they had already said goodbye. On The Returned, it is the living who are truly obsessed with death.

A scene from season two of The Returned

“Fabrice wanted the dead to be the living ones and the living to be dead,” says Jenna Thiam, who plays Camille’s sister Léna.

“Before shooting I thought it would be a relief to see a loved one come back,” she says. “While we were preparing, and as I read about grief, I realised that I would not be relieved at all. I would reject that person because it is just terrifying.”

On set for the filming of series two, it is clear everyone involved in The Returned is quietly stunned by its success. In this golden era of Scandinavian noir, French television continues to punch conspicuously below its weight. The nation that arguably did more than any other to elevate cinema to high art still regards television as an inferior medium.

After The Returned season one became a critical hit in the UK and US, friends asked Gobert when he would get around to making a film. Television was perceived as merely a stepping stone.

“We’re really ashamed of our television shows,” says Thiam. “People in France were impressed by The Returned because, even though it was French, it had that US 'touch’. Friends would say, ‘Wow, it actually works like an American show.’ They were impressed because it was French.”

Yet for all the acclaim, there is a consensus that season one ended on an unsatisfying note. After a midnight face-off with “the returned”, the survivors roll back the shutters of the community centre where they have sheltered to find the invaders gone and their town mysteriously flooded. But why had the dead come back in the first place? How to explain the animal corpses strewn on random street corners? Where had zombie leader Lucy taken Camille and Victor?

In all, Canal Plus, the French broadcaster bankrolling the series, estimated 27 questions needed answering. Sitting down to write season two, Gobert was determined to provide all the illumination he could. He does not wish for The Returned to become the French Lost – a promising premise undone by a failure to sustain an internal logic.

Pierre Perrier (Simon) and Ana Girardot (Lucy) in The Returned, season two

“I was informed by Canal Plus that a lot of people were not happy with the last episode,” says the 40-year-old, who reveals the second series was delayed because of differences with executives as to the direction of the storyline (in the end a compromise was hashed out). “The answers were not there. We don’t want it to be all mystery. Never answering the questions – just going on to another question… we try not to employ that mechanism. I’m not a huge fan of Lost. There were too many mysteries.”

Questions about season two are politely deflected by cast and crew. However, we know that the story resumes six months after the first series’ finale and that we will meet new protagonists, most prominently Laurent Lucas as Berg, a government official dispatched to solve the puzzle of the town’s flooding.

“I hope people don’t just want answers,” says Gobert. “It’s not a thriller or whodunnit where we simply wish to find out what happened.”

Among the influences Gobert brought to bear on The Returned were Twin Peaks and HBO vampire romp True Blood (which deals with the mundanities of a world in which the supernatural is real). Yet The Returned is anything but a hodgepodge. It has a distinctively other-worldly look, achieved by shooting key scenes at dawn and dusk, with the atmosphere further ratcheted by a brooding score.

“Honestly, I was afraid people would find it too slow, too dark, too ordinary,” says Frédéric Pierrot. “And then, to see viewers discover it in France and, after that, internationally… I shot a film in Sevenoaks in England and people were coming up to me and asking, ‘Are you Frédéric from The Returned?’. I couldn’t believe it. And then it happened again in the States. Incredible – a very big surprise.”